Googling "citywide wireless" will get you a lot of
links from 2004, brimming with optimism about the promise of municipal internet
access. By 2006, however, the returns are fewer, and have a sour tone. From San
Francisco to Philadelphia, ambitious city network plans stalled, hobbled by
technical, logistical, and contractual issues.

Today, Minneapolis is one of few American cities
whose WiFi plans are actually succeeding. Minneapolis studied the missteps of other
urban networks before signing a 10-year contract with Minnesota-based USI
Wireless. The private company manages and profits from the 59-square-mile Wireless
Minneapolis network, while the city leverages it to deliver government services
and build digital inclusion.

Minneapolis CIO Lynn Willenbring told The Atlantic how her city's wireless
network helped Minneapolis through a disaster even before it was built. She
also talked to us about bridging the digital divide and letting for-profit
companies do what they do best.

What were your goals in developing a citywide
wireless network?

First and foremost, our objective was to meet our
institutional uses so that our field staff had mobile broadband access, whether
they were public safety staff--police and fire--or crews fixing a pothole or
inspecting buildings.

Secondarily, we recognized that we would like to help
bridge the digital divide. So as part of our arrangement, the vendor, USI
Wireless, can sell service to residential and commercial customers as well. We're
just the anchor tenant on the network, but it's their network to own and
operate. We just have a guaranteed minimum payment for the 10 years of the
contract.

On your site, it says that the network played a
critical role in enabling the city's rapid response to the I-35 bridge collapse
in August 2007. Can you tell me more about that?

We were fortunate that the place where the bridge
collapsed was one of the areas we'd built out for a pilot when we were
evaluating our two finalists. It happened to be the site run by USI Wireless.
So that gave us broadband access right on the shore of the river. The police
and fire set up an emergency command center there, a tent and a parking lot,
and we were able to access heavy GIS files and aerial photography and
video--only because we had wireless broadband access in that spot.

We also utilized the network to put up some wireless
cameras a day or so after the bridge collapsed, monitoring the recovery efforts
in our emergency operations center, which was in City Hall. And, because the
cameras had IP addresses, we could give those to any of our mutual aid partners
or other parties who were assisting us. The Minnesota State Patrol was there,
the Navy SEALS eventually came in to help remove underwater debris, and the IP
addresses made it possible for any of those law-enforcement agencies to monitor
the cameras.

Tell me more about why you decided to contract out
the network to a private company.

When we initially came up with this ambitious
project, we looked at some of the cities that had gone before us, as well as
some of the missteps they took--which is why we decided that we didn't want to
own and operate the network. Doing it ourselves just wasn't the best model;
that wasn't our core competency.

When I talk to others around the country, one of the
things they're most interested in is how we make this work financially. To make
this work financially, there has got to be a mechanism for the service provider
to make a profit. They need to market and provide service that they can provide
the citizens of Minneapolis at a competitive rate; other than that, their
profit can be unlimited.

Working with
USI Wireless also helps ensure that there is coverage border to border. Police
and fire respond everywhere. Inspectors are looking at every building
throughout the city. We have to have that 100 percent coverage. That helps us where
some cities have struggled, because the lower-income parts of the city don't
necessarily attract the vendors to build out that network.

USI Wireless claims that Wireless Minneapolis
offers benefits to the community that go far beyond what any city has
implemented. Are you distinctly farther ahead of any other U.S. city in city
wireless or digital inclusion?

I don't want to compare Minneapolis to other cities,
but I do feel that we're leaders in this area around the country. There are a
few other significant things, particularly around digital inclusion, that we
built into our contract. In no particular order --

We
have accounts for 100 free community technology centers. Sometimes these sites
are run by nonprofits, some of them are located in libraries and some are in
park and rec facilities. Residents can use the computers there and go online,
free.

We
also have 750 free one-month subscriptions, basically little voucher cards,
that those community technology centers get. The idea is that they can give them
to the volunteers that are doing the teaching and training.

Our
Digital Inclusion Fund started with half a million dollars in seed money and is
managed by a citizen's group that gives out that money as grants. Five percent
of the pre-tax revenues that USI Wireless gets from running the citywide
wireless network goes into the fund to replenish it.

Five
percent of the nodes are free WiFi hotspots across the city. A great number of
them are adjacent to parks. The idea was essentially that those hotspots are
where people are likely to gather and use a laptop, and they want to have the
freedom of WiFi.

Let's talk a more about the Digital Inclusion
Fund. What do those grants pay for?

Some of the funds pay for instructional materials and
holding classes for the community, some of them pay to purchase computers ... anything
that is going to help those more disadvantaged communities when it comes to
using the Internet. When you're looking at bridging the digital divide,
there are three factors: you have to have the hardware, you have to have access
to the Internet at an affordable rate, and you have to have training so people
know how to use it.

That last element is something I think people too often
take for granted, that everyone just knows how to get on the Internet and look for
a job or apply for a job. More and more, that's the only way to find
employment. Particularly if you're a recent immigrant and you didn't have this
opportunity in your home country, these are things you need to learn.

Is there some sort of marketing or
community-awareness plan in place to reach out to neighborhoods where broadband
access has been a challenge?

We did quite a bit of community marketing when we
opened the program up with the grants we are providing for the community
technology centers. When it comes to marketing to community residents, however,
that would be completely on USI Wireless. It would be inappropriate for the
city to market on behalf of a private vendor. It's the same as if we were
marketing for Qwest or Comcast--that would be a conflict of interest.

Yes. USI Wireless implemented it, but we put that in
our original request for proposal. Essentially, it allows free, unlimited
access to any site within a walled garden and you don't need a subscription to
USI to do that.

The sites that are included in the Civic Garden are
all community-based organizations, generally non-profits or government
agencies. So obviously the city's websites are included: the Park Board, the
schools, the Red Cross, the Metropolitan Transit Authority with all the bus and
train schedules--the types of things that everybody needs but cannot access if
they don't have access to the Internet and or can't afford the USI Wireless
reduced rate.

Do you have any other thoughts about how Wireless
Minneapolis might enable the delivery of city services to the community?

As we move into the future, we're hoping to enable
even greater interaction with our residents so we can build transparent
government and let citizens access that information. Open government is definitely
the wave of the future--I think any government that is ignoring it is doing it
at their peril. As far as the network goes, I can't say that we have anything
specific in the pipeline right now, but as we gain more experience, we fully
intend to leverage it to the nth degree.

About the Author

Most Popular

Should you drink more coffee? Should you take melatonin? Can you train yourself to need less sleep? A physician’s guide to sleep in a stressful age.

During residency, Iworked hospital shifts that could last 36 hours, without sleep, often without breaks of more than a few minutes. Even writing this now, it sounds to me like I’m bragging or laying claim to some fortitude of character. I can’t think of another type of self-injury that might be similarly lauded, except maybe binge drinking. Technically the shifts were 30 hours, the mandatory limit imposed by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, but we stayed longer because people kept getting sick. Being a doctor is supposed to be about putting other people’s needs before your own. Our job was to power through.

The shifts usually felt shorter than they were, because they were so hectic. There was always a new patient in the emergency room who needed to be admitted, or a staff member on the eighth floor (which was full of late-stage terminally ill people) who needed me to fill out a death certificate. Sleep deprivation manifested as bouts of anger and despair mixed in with some euphoria, along with other sensations I’ve not had before or since. I remember once sitting with the family of a patient in critical condition, discussing an advance directive—the terms defining what the patient would want done were his heart to stop, which seemed likely to happen at any minute. Would he want to have chest compressions, electrical shocks, a breathing tube? In the middle of this, I had to look straight down at the chart in my lap, because I was laughing. This was the least funny scenario possible. I was experiencing a physical reaction unrelated to anything I knew to be happening in my mind. There is a type of seizure, called a gelastic seizure, during which the seizing person appears to be laughing—but I don’t think that was it. I think it was plain old delirium. It was mortifying, though no one seemed to notice.

His paranoid style paved the road for Trumpism. Now he fears what’s been unleashed.

Glenn Beck looks like the dad in a Disney movie. He’s earnest, geeky, pink, and slightly bulbous. His idea of salty language is bullcrap.

The atmosphere at Beck’s Mercury Studios, outside Dallas, is similarly soothing, provided you ignore the references to genocide and civilizational collapse. In October, when most commentators considered a Donald Trump presidency a remote possibility, I followed audience members onto the set of The Glenn Beck Program, which airs on Beck’s website, theblaze.com. On the way, we passed through a life-size replica of the Oval Office as it might look if inhabited by a President Beck, complete with a portrait of Ronald Reagan and a large Norman Rockwell print of a Boy Scout.

Why the ingrained expectation that women should desire to become parents is unhealthy

In 2008, Nebraska decriminalized child abandonment. The move was part of a "safe haven" law designed to address increased rates of infanticide in the state. Like other safe-haven laws, parents in Nebraska who felt unprepared to care for their babies could drop them off in a designated location without fear of arrest and prosecution. But legislators made a major logistical error: They failed to implement an age limitation for dropped-off children.

Within just weeks of the law passing, parents started dropping off their kids. But here's the rub: None of them were infants. A couple of months in, 36 children had been left in state hospitals and police stations. Twenty-two of the children were over 13 years old. A 51-year-old grandmother dropped off a 12-year-old boy. One father dropped off his entire family -- nine children from ages one to 17. Others drove from neighboring states to drop off their children once they heard that they could abandon them without repercussion.

Since the end of World War II, the most crucial underpinning of freedom in the world has been the vigor of the advanced liberal democracies and the alliances that bound them together. Through the Cold War, the key multilateral anchors were NATO, the expanding European Union, and the U.S.-Japan security alliance. With the end of the Cold War and the expansion of NATO and the EU to virtually all of Central and Eastern Europe, liberal democracy seemed ascendant and secure as never before in history.

Under the shrewd and relentless assault of a resurgent Russian authoritarian state, all of this has come under strain with a speed and scope that few in the West have fully comprehended, and that puts the future of liberal democracy in the world squarely where Vladimir Putin wants it: in doubt and on the defensive.

The same part of the brain that allows us to step into the shoes of others also helps us restrain ourselves.

You’ve likely seen the video before: a stream of kids, confronted with a single, alluring marshmallow. If they can resist eating it for 15 minutes, they’ll get two. Some do. Others cave almost immediately.

This “Marshmallow Test,” first conducted in the 1960s, perfectly illustrates the ongoing war between impulsivity and self-control. The kids have to tamp down their immediate desires and focus on long-term goals—an ability that correlates with their later health, wealth, and academic success, and that is supposedly controlled by the front part of the brain. But a new study by Alexander Soutschek at the University of Zurich suggests that self-control is also influenced by another brain region—and one that casts this ability in a different light.

Modern slot machines develop an unbreakable hold on many players—some of whom wind up losing their jobs, their families, and even, as in the case of Scott Stevens, their lives.

On the morning of Monday, August 13, 2012, Scott Stevens loaded a brown hunting bag into his Jeep Grand Cherokee, then went to the master bedroom, where he hugged Stacy, his wife of 23 years. “I love you,” he told her.

Stacy thought that her husband was off to a job interview followed by an appointment with his therapist. Instead, he drove the 22 miles from their home in Steubenville, Ohio, to the Mountaineer Casino, just outside New Cumberland, West Virginia. He used the casino ATM to check his bank-account balance: $13,400. He walked across the casino floor to his favorite slot machine in the high-limit area: Triple Stars, a three-reel game that cost $10 a spin. Maybe this time it would pay out enough to save him.

“Well, you’re just special. You’re American,” remarked my colleague, smirking from across the coffee table. My other Finnish coworkers, from the school in Helsinki where I teach, nodded in agreement. They had just finished critiquing one of my habits, and they could see that I was on the defensive.

I threw my hands up and snapped, “You’re accusing me of being too friendly? Is that really such a bad thing?”

“Well, when I greet a colleague, I keep track,” she retorted, “so I don’t greet them again during the day!” Another chimed in, “That’s the same for me, too!”

Unbelievable, I thought. According to them, I’m too generous with my hellos.

When I told them I would do my best to greet them just once every day, they told me not to change my ways. They said they understood me. But the thing is, now that I’ve viewed myself from their perspective, I’m not sure I want to remain the same. Change isn’t a bad thing. And since moving to Finland two years ago, I’ve kicked a few bad American habits.

A report will be shared with lawmakers before Trump’s inauguration, a top advisor said Friday.

Updated at 2:20 p.m.

President Obama asked intelligence officials to perform a “full review” of election-related hacking this week, and plans will share a report of its findings with lawmakers before he leaves office on January 20, 2017.

Deputy White House Press Secretary Eric Schultz said Friday that the investigation will reach all the way back to 2008, and will examine patterns of “malicious cyber-activity timed to election cycles.” He emphasized that the White House is not questioning the results of the November election.

Asked whether a sweeping investigation could be completed in the time left in Obama’s final term—just six weeks—Schultz replied that intelligence agencies will work quickly, because the preparing the report is “a major priority for the president of the United States.”

A professor of cognitive science argues that the world is nothing like the one we experience through our senses.

As we go about our daily lives, we tend to assume that our perceptions—sights, sounds, textures, tastes—are an accurate portrayal of the real world. Sure, when we stop and think about it—or when we find ourselves fooled by a perceptual illusion—we realize with a jolt that what we perceive is never the world directly, but rather our brain’s best guess at what that world is like, a kind of internal simulation of an external reality. Still, we bank on the fact that our simulation is a reasonably decent one. If it wasn’t, wouldn’t evolution have weeded us out by now? The true reality might be forever beyond our reach, but surely our senses give us at least an inkling of what it’s really like.